Isabella Augustus, Queen of Teck

Isabella Augustus Viktoria Irene Adelaide, Queen of Teck, later High Empress Consort Elizabeth Maria Georgina of Queensberry (born 21 September 1812), was a former Teck Princess of German extraction who later on in her life, reigned as Queen regnant of the Teck Kingdom in her own right before and during WWI, as one of the very last Queen regnants left in Germany by the 18th and 19th centuries, before finally abdicating her throne on November 11, 1918. She was noted to be the oldest sister of Duke Alexander of Württemberg (the father of Francis, Duke of Teck and grandmother of Queen Mary of the United Kingdom) and the mother of Princesses Elisabeth, Katharina, Helga, Emilia, Georgina, Amalia and Viktoria and Princes Edward, Rupert, Alexander, Ludwig, Christopher, and Fredrick. Her reign marked the very first time in several centuries that a female had reigned over any area of land in Germany underneath the Salic Laws, which technically prohibited women from ascending to any throne in Germany. In 1876, Princess Elisabeth Maxime of Teck; the eldest niece of the now elderly Queen (aged 63 at the time) became engaged to Prince Fredrick ("Freddie") of the United Kingdom; Isabella disapproved of Prince Fredrick and refused to give her consent to either the engagement or the marriage.

Isabella married Emperor Leopold III of Queensberry in 1834. Their children married into noble families as well as the Imperial Family of Russia, as she refused to allow her children to interbreed with their close relations. Princess Mary Adelaide of Cambridge reportably hated Isabella as the reigning Queen regnant saw her as a "nuisance" within the Royal Family of the Kingdom of Teck and refused to acknowledge her as the wife of her nephew, Francis. Their relationship eventually improved with the birth of Mary`s second-born child, a son baptized as "Adolphus" and whom Isabella bestowed the title of "Prince" upon. The subsequent births of "Prince Francis" and "Prince Alexander" improved the British princess` standing in the German court of her Domineering Aunt-in-law who heavily doted on her eldest grandniece, Mary of Teck. Upon the birth of her first grandchild; Princess Amelia of the Netherlands, the elderly Queen earned the sobriquet of "the grandmother of the noble families of Europe" and spreading her fierce temper in European nobility and Russian royalty. After Leopold`s death in 1866, which conceded with the death of her first grandchild, Isabella plunged into a period of deep mourning and religious devotion to her native religion, heavily imploring her religion`s God so that no more of her relatives would be taken away from her. Though she plunged deep into a period of deep mourning, she regularly appeared in public, fulfilling her duties as the reigning monarch of the Kingdom of Teck. Her Golden and Diamond Jubilees were times of public celebration and often led to Isabella smiling happily from the balcony where she was watching the celebration that her countrymen were throwing to celebrate years of her reign. After the end of World War I on November 11, 1918; Isabella abdicated her throne as Queen of Teck and became a private citizen of Germany. Most notably as the Kingdom of Teck had not participated in the First World War and no records existed of their involvement; the former Queen regnant and her relatives traveled to the Netherlands to spend time with her grandchild (Princess Amelia). Unfortunately with the rise of the Nazi Party in the Weimar Republic; the former Queen regnant was put in danger and fled the Netherlands to the United States of America, hoping that she would finally be free. With the end of World War II; Isabella eventually filed for American citizenship and became a private American citizen, having been stripped of her German citizenship when she fled the country to the Netherlands during the subsequent rise of the Nazi Party in the Weimar Republic. She was remarried to future Zarian Emperor; Leopold II of Zaria on 11 December 1980, much to the discontent of her descendants and other relatives who disliked her new husband. By virtue of her marriage to Leopold II of Zaria, she has 100+ daughters, 99+ grandchildren, and 67+ great-grandchildren. As of the current time, she is the Empress Consort of the Zarian Empire and of 5/10/2021, she is the Empress Dowager of the Zarian Empire, due to the abdication of her husband.

Birth and family
Isabella`s father was Duke Louis of Württemberg, the second son of Frederick II Eugene, Duke of Württemberg and the eldest of King Frederick I of Württemberg, the first king of Württemberg`s younger sisters. Until 21 September 1812, Frederick`s niece, Duchess Alexandra of Württemberg, was the only legitimate male-line grandchild of Frederick II and was thus the heir presumptive of the duchy itself. Her death in 1812 precipitated such a large succession crisis that even the ministers of the King of Württemberg were concerned about the survival of the Duchy, if the new King`s younger brothers couldn`t produce heirs. Her mother was Princess Princess Henriette of Nassau-Weilburg (1780-1857), a great-granddaughter of King George II of Great Britain through his eldest daughter Anne, Princess Royal and Princess of Orange. One of her most notable older brothers was Duke Alexander Paul Ludwig Konstantin of Württemberg; by which she had relatives. Isabella Augustus Viktoria Irene Adelaide von Teck was born at 4:29 a.m. on 21 September 1812 at Esseg, Slavonia in the Austrian Empire, which is located in modern-day Osijek, Croatia.

Isabella was christened privately by the Archbishop of Württemberg, Fredrick Alexander von Drelbouch, on 21 October 1812 in the Cupola Room at the private estate that her parents owned. She was baptised Isabella after a historical German Queen; Isabella of Aragon, Queen of Germany, Augustus after the first ruler of the Roman Empire; Julius Augustus Caesar, Viktoria after Queen Victoria`s mother; Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, Irene after historical German Queen; Queen Irene Angelina and Adelaide after Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen. For some reason, she was never named after any one of her parents, which was quite unusual for the time as most noble and royal children carried a name which one of their parents had been born with; instead she was named after politically powerful figures who reigned in their own right and a great amount of ruthlessness. Additional names proposed by her parents—Charlotte, Olivia and Beatrix—were deemed too "fancy" and "spiffy" for the baby Isabella.

At birth, Isabella was not in the line of succession due to her gender—a fact that never served to infuriate the young Princess, as well as drive her to complete tears—she showed incredible interest in the matters of state and politics, a matter which never served to infuriate her older brothers. She was a rather fragile child and had a fiery temper that could match that of her father—she held a distant relationship with her mother and was uninterested in lady-like activities, preferring to ride horses across the landscape with her older brothers, hunt animals, and shoot her bow. Her mother had one more child; Princess Elizabeth of Württemberg, with whom Isabella held a distant relationship with. Following the events of the creation of the Kingdom of Teck by a somewhat distant male relative of Isabella and her family, the throne passed to her (albeit she was only a somewhat distant cousin to him); the Salic Laws were not enforced in the Kingdom of Teck so as a female, she could legally inherit the throne. He had no surviving issue and had no plans to marry, making her the heir apparent of the Kingdom of Teck.

Heir Apparent
Isabella later described her childhood as "rather melancholy", "not fun" and rather "quite dull". The somewhat distant male cousin had taken her to the capital of the new Kingdom and was extremely protective over her, preferring her to study in preparation of her role as the future Queen Regnant and her current role as the heir apparent. Due to this, Isabella was raised completely isolated from other children, including those of reigning German monarchs. During her lessons, she became fluent in French, German, Italian, Latin and English but spoke only Russian and French in the presence of her tutors, as well as the assembled Teck Royal Court. The Teck Royal Court largely helped in the isolation, with Isabella speaking fondly upon them when remembering her childhood. When she was only eight-years-old, the young heir apparent and her somewhat distant cousin traveled to the British Isles to visit a baby, Queen Victoria, whom Isabella described as "rather loud; though quite beautiful in terms of her appearance. A strong future monarch lies in her mother`s arms and I shall be strong like that baby too!" Most notably, Isabella became the first princess of the Kingdom of Teck to even visit the young Queen Victoria and called her "strong of heart", much to the disappointment of her distant cousin who loathed children and especially babies to such an extreme extent that even her parents waited before sending his new heir apparent to his castle; he made an exception for Isabella, seeing her as the "apple of his eye", with him treating her akin to one of his own late daughters. In 1829, her distant cousin took her to meet the now much-older Princess Victoria, the Duchess of Kent and Conroy; she later described the extremely isolated child as "largely quite independent of the affections of her mother; a fierce lion. She is such a warrior; she is what every single princess should aspire to be, a woman that spurns the affections of men and subjects them underneath her will. She will be the greatest Queen regnant this women-spurning world has ever seen! All praise the future Queen Victoria!" The future Queen Victoria reportably saw Isabella as "one of the strongest females that I knew; the fierce and defiant heir apparent of the Kingdom of Teck, she was truly a inspiration, she is a powerful ruler and I know how I shall rule now. I shall rule like the heir apparent of the Kingdom of Teck; a fierce lioness of a Queen who doesn`t hesitate to defend her country but is calm and compassionate to a core." However Isabella was not impressed by John Conroy, seeing him as a "blight" on an otherwise illustrious family dynasty and expressed her dislike of him openly.

Early reign
Isabella turned 16 on 11 May 1829, and a regency was avoided. Less than a month later, on 20 June 1829, Frederick IV died at the age of 67, and Isabella became Queen of the Kingdom of Teck. In her diary she wrote, "At 6 o'clock, I was awoken by the sounds of the Kingdom, it was quite unusual. Then I was informed of my poor dear cousin William`s death and that as of this moment, I am the new Queen of Teck. Now I must reign my Kingdom to the best of my abilities and I shall never marry; no man and no woman shall hold any power over me as long as I live; I am the Queen of Teck!" Isabella preferred her first name and the official documents prepared on the first day of her reign described her as such; in fact when a international newspaper attempted to call her Queen Isabella Augustus, the Queen was reportably so digusted by it using her second name that she banned it from the Kingdom completely and her new Kingdom followed suit. Unfortunately, this caused an international incident between the Kingdom of Teck and the Kingdom of Hanover, only being resolved when King William IV intervened. Isabella was reportably so bitter about the incident that she refused to come to Hanover`s aid when they were being attacked by Prussia during the German-Prussia War; she only came to the aid of Hanover after Princess Victoria gently pleaded with her to reconsider. This one incident caused both women to express a desire to strike up a stronger friendship than the one that they currently had. At the time of her accession, her ministers were in disarray and worried about the future of the succession of the Kingdom, as she was neither married or had any children (male or female) who could become the new regnant after she died. Her coronation took place on 28 June 1830 at Augustus Palace in Hanover, Teck. Over 400,000 visitors came to the city of Hanover for the celebrations. She became the first soverign to take up residence at the Augustus Palace (which was later renamed the Queen Isabella Palace by Princess Katharina; one of her daughters) and inherited the revenues of the duchies Goldenglow and Glasgow as well as being granted a civil list allowance of £385,000 per year. Financially prudent, she was a miser when it came to money and refused to allow herself to live in comfort; often finding new ways that she could save even more money.

At the start of her reign, Isabella was popular, but her reputation suffered in an 1831 court intrigue when one of her own ladies-in-waiting, Lady Isabel Mure-Campbell developed an alarming abdominal growth. Isabella was so horrified by Isabel`s fragile condition that she refused to allow Isabel out in fears that she would be jeered at by passerbyers for humiliating their Kingdom`s Queen. She deeply trusted Isabel and was so extremely The public believed that she had Lady Isabel locked up in her castle and demanded for her to let her go. The Queen refused and openly spoke about Isabel`s condition citing "that she was in such fragile health and that as the soverign of the Kingdom of Teck, it was her duty to care for her citizens even if it resulted in her death". When Lady Isabel died in July, the post-mortem revealed a large tumour on her liver that had distended her abdomen. At public appearances, Isabel was hissed and jeered as "Mrs. Conroy". After Victoria turned 18 on 24 May 1837; the two women often conspired with each other to link the Kingdom of Teck and the British Dominions through marriage, either by marrying themselves to each other (in which case Isabella had no legimente successor to carry on her succession) or marrying one of their children to each other.

Marriage
Though Isabella was now queen, as an unmarried young woman she was required by social convention to live with her mother, something that she deemed not possible due to her mother being the consort of another Kingdom; instead she chose a female and male-line descendant of Tsar Nicholas I of Russia and Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna to serve as her companion. Alexandra, though much younger than her, was fiercely protective over the Queen and absolutely abhorred men of all kinds, which interestingly enough even extended to her own male family members. Isabella was so enamored with the almost, zealous, worshipping behavior shown to her by Alexander; who fiercely protected Isabella`s virtue, honor, virginity and respective rights of the Queen regnant, that she showed her immense favoritism. She refused to go anywhere without Alexandra, with Alexandra training herself in the ways of the Prussian Teutonic knights, so as to better protect Isabella from would-be assassins. On Alexandra`s birthday; Isabella took her to the British Isles to meet with Queen Victoria, with Alexandra later speaking of the Queen to Isabella "as a fierce lioness of a Queen, who reigns without letting a worthless man tie her down; identical to the way you rule, your Majesty. The best ways to rule for a woman in this age are murder a male ruler or succeed to the throne by legal means, always choose the option to murder a man. Men are disgusting and deserve to die". Isabella had not shown any interest in marrying and Alexandra intended to keep her from finding a husband; citing them as "disgusting vermin" on more than one occasion. Eventually Isabella started worrying about the future of the succession, as she desperately needed a heir (of which she didn`t have any children or even grandnieces/grandnephews) in order to carry on the succession; Alexandra reluctantly relented but refused to allow a provision that would allow any of her close male relatives to take the throne in case of her death, so the provision was rewritten such that only close female relatives to Isabella could assume the throne. Alexandra proposed Emperor Leopold III of Queensberry; a distant relative to the Russian Imperial House of Romanov, and with whom, Alexandra was extremely close to; Isabella showed a slight interest in Leopold but resisted attempts from her own male and female relatives to rush her into wedlock. When Isabella complained to Alexandra that her relatives were attempting to "rush my decision for a choice of a husband", Alexandra sympathised but said it could be avoided by marriage, which Isabella immediately called a "schocking [sic] alternative". She also called it "a somewhat extreme measure" and took note of it`s advantages for future reference. Isabella greatly despised Lady Flora Hastings; a lady-in-waiting to Duchess Victoria of Kent, as she attempted to influence the politics of the Kingdom of Teck by attempting to manipulate Queen Victoria on more than one occasion, Isabella was infuriated by her attempts and she sent several strongly-worded letters to Lady Flora, advising her to marry into a well-off family but stay out of her political business. On 21 August 1930, the Queen traveled with Alexandra and Lady Maria Hasting to the baptism of the newest member of the Chantian royal family; Princess Ariella, where she blessed the child (her great-niece) with a leading position of the Knight of the Order of the Garter Award and gave her the position of "heir presumptive" in the Kingdom of Teck, essentially making her a possible heir to Isabella, as well as likely securing the succession of her Kingdom for an undetermined amount of time. Isabella continued to praise Leopold following his second visit in October of 1817. Leopold held a reverent form of affection for the Queen, considering her to be akin to "a precious treasure"; the couple was eventually married on 11 May 1942, in the Cupola Room of Augustus Palace, Hanover. Isabella was described as "beaming with happiness; her smile could light up a room". She spent the evening after their wedding speaking happily on her expectations of the marriage, later writing in her diary:

"I had not expected my wedding to go smoothly – nothing in my life goes smoothly, the death of my beloved, Lady Isabel and the dear of most dearest Frederick – all of these are some of my concerns but I will not allow this marriage to fail! This marriage must succeed, I need a acknowledged heir to succeed me as Queen!"

Leopold became an important political adviser to the young Queen, influencing many of her policies, often working with strong-headed Alexandra (her personal companion); they became part of her series of minsters, becoming extremely dominant influential figures during her reign as Queen. Where Alexandra was a cautious, stern, firm, calm and collected adviser with a nasty temper that was quick to rouse, Leopold was the very opposite of Alexander; being rather cool-headed, collected, but just as dangerous as Alexandra when it came to military strategies, having a temper that was slow to rouse itself. Leopold eventually managed to install his four younger sisters as confidantes to the Queen and Alexandra in the Royal Court of Teck; a change actually welcomed by the Queen, Alexandra, and many ladies of the Royal Court of Teck, as all of them had experience in matters of Government, Diplomacy, and Politics. Princess Ingrid, the eldest of Leopold`s four sisters served underneath Alexandra and often looked up to the older woman; the two of them working in tandem to boost the popularity of the Queen in her native Kingdom of Teck, as well as advise her on important political strategies for the future. During the Queen`s first pregnancy in 1845, in the first few months of the marriage, 15-year-old Englishwoman Elizabeth Oxford attempted to assassinate her while she was riding in a carriage with Leopold and Alexandra on her way to visit her great-niece. The Queen was set into a state of shock by the attack on her person and went into labor early; giving birth to her baby in the Chapel of Grace in the Chantian Royal Family Complex in the Kingdom of Chanta. Her daughter, also named Isabella, was born on 21 November 1845. The Queen despised being pregnant, passing on her dislike of being pregnant to her future sister-in-law, Alexandra, and all of her children born to her and both of her husbands. The Royal Court of Teck were against bottle-feeding, and advised on breast-feeding; though they held a certain disdain for newborn babies, refusing to see them wandering throughout the Royal Castle. Nevertheless, over the following seventeen years, she and Leopold had several more children: Katharina (b. 1848), Helga (b. 1849), Emilia (b. 1855), Georgina (b. 1859), Amalia (b. 1866), Viktoria (b. 1869), Edward Alexander (b. 1872), Rupert Christopher (b. 1875), Alexander Ludwig (b. 1877), Ludwig Frederick (b. 1879), Christopher Alphonsus (b. 1882) and Fredrick Alfonso (b. 1899).

Isabella`s household was largely run by her childhood friend, Grand Duchess Alexandra Nikolaevna from the Russian Empire, her most-beloved husband Leopold and Leopold`s four sisters from the Queensberry Empire. Alexandra had been a formative influence on Isabella and had supported her no matter the stance she took; it mattered not the issue, she analyzed the situation before always taking the side of the Queen. Though she was not fond of males, presumably to the circumstances of birth and the strictness of her father; Alexandra was unusually amicable towards Leopold and even wrote that "Leopold is such a dear; he is quite charming, quiet, and listens well. Those are the markings of an excellent consort. He is the only man that I will compliment in my lifetime". All three of these parties worked so well together that they were even able to advise her on forging alliances for her Kingdom and marrying her children off to gain dynastic claims to other countries; Baroness Louise Lehzen often served as the messenger between the United Kingdom and the Kingdom of Teck, ferrying letters to Queen Victoria from Isabella, Alexandra, Leopold, or any of Leopold`s four sisters. After Lehzen was pensioned off in 1842, Isabella sent her a official letters of summoning, ordering her to appear between them after which she extended her an offer to work for them; Lehzen agreed and was hired onto the staff of the Kingdom of Teck. When the Potato Blight hit Ireland in 1845; Isabella donated £2,000 (equivalent to between £178,000 and £6.5 million in 2016) to the British Relief Association, the same amount donated by Queen Victoria. By 1846, Isabella became known as the "Warrior Queen" after she personally fended off the advances of Leopold`s enemy, Tsar Alexander I of Russia from taking a foothold in her Kingdom; in Russia, she became known as the "Heavenly Warrior Queen" and rumors spread that she was related to a Russian Mythological Figure known as "General Winter"—on the same day that they invaided her country, a huge ice storm, the likes of which had never been seen before in Germany swept the entire country, burying the country underneath mountains of ice and snow, bringing with it bristling winds and high-speed ice storms, which drove back the Russian Imperial Military from advancing. Rumor mills through the German Confederation spread that she used her inherited powers over the winter to drive the invaders from Russia away from her country and deter them from attacking again—whatever the case, they never tried to attack her Kingdom again. Internationally, Isabella`s ministers advised her to ally herself as well as her Kingdom to Great Britain, in order to fulfill a promise she made to Queen Victoria in her youth; Isabella reluctantly agreed and allowed for Princess Maxime (one of her nieces) to marry Prince Philip (a son of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert) in 1858. Such a move directly allied the United Kingdom to the Teck Kingdom, who had been secretly supporting the British behind the scenes, concealing all of their covert treaties behind a façade of indifference to get away with supporting them; this move to support Queen Victoria and her allies led to Teck being declared an ally of the British Empire, due to their efforts in supporting the British.